However, a casual acquaintance of Palfrey's, Raymond Delauney, encountered them on their dinner date when a restaurant nearly denied them entry, whereupon he proceeded to seduce April.

After hearing his story, Potter assigns Palfrey to attend a selection of courses, each of which teach several ploys to gain the upper hand in various situations in life.

Finally, Palfrey challenges Delauney to a tennis rematch, using various ploys to frustrate and fluster him, causing him to lose the match ruin his chances with April.

[1] Dunstan and Dudley, the dishonest "Winsome Welshmen" car salesmen, were based on similar characters in a 1950s BBC radio comedy series, In All Directions, in which the leads were played by Ustinov and Jones; their catch phrase "Run for it!"

[7] In the film, Palfrey foolishly buys a "1924 4-litre Swiftmobile" from the crooked "Winsome Welshmen", and later succeeds in trading the car back to them for an ex-works Austin-Healey 100-six and 100 guineas (£105).

[9] The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "The joke of Lifemanship, so elaborately worked up by Stephen Potter in his series of books, already looks a little fatigued, like the game of U and non-U.

But the corner is never turned and the film keeps to a simpler formula: the before and after manner of the advertisements, with the one-down man rather monotonously demonstrating how Potterism has helped him to become one-up.

In view of the limitations of the script, which makes nothing of the underlying savageries of the Lifemanship game of humiliation and inspired bad manners, Robert Hamer has directed with intelligent restraint.

"[10] While the review in The Times was very noncommittal,[3] Leslie Halliwell described the film as "an amusing trifle, basically a series of sketches by familiar comic actors", and awarded it one star (out of a maximum of four and a minimum of zero).

[1] In 2007, CNN listed the performance of Terry-Thomas among the top 10 British film villains, stating: "Thomas was the template for the lily-livered upper class bounder.